


I Don't Know You

by boyphobic



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Camping, Developing Friendships, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Grief/Mourning, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-06-27 09:04:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19787677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boyphobic/pseuds/boyphobic
Summary: Arthur Morgan is used to being a guardian. To being a protector, a soldier; someone seen and not heard. When Albert Mason looks as him, Arthur feels something new - vulnerability.The night feels long and unending out on the prairie, and they both don't quite know how much they can reveal to each other. They're two different men with two drastically different backgrounds, but Arthur is tired of trying to hide.Maybe Albert isn't so dull after all.





	I Don't Know You

**Author's Note:**

> hello ! rdr2 isnt a cowboy game, its a game about a lot of men falling in love with arthur while arthur is completely clueless about it. thank you

It’s the darkest hour of the night, so late that not even the lightening bugs stick around a moment longer than necessary in this humidity. It saps Arthur of his strength, acting as a thick, woolen blanket pulled over his eyes. His huffs out a shallow whisper and wipes the edge of his hairline with the back of his palm, reaching out periodically to stab at the campfire.

After an exhaustively intensive afternoon dealing with being hungry wolves, blood-thirsty alligators, and wild mustangs, Arthur had had enough. Fortunately, the notoriously flighty photographer resting a couple of feet in front of Arthur had the same idea. He reckoned that there was only so many times a wild animal could lunge at you before it really started to get under your skin.

At the suggestion of Albert, Arthur decided to set up a temporary shelter for the night, as the New Yorker was rather interested in getting a few shots of some morning doves come sunrise. Arthur, not having anything _better_ to do like steal some much-needed cash or bring back important supplies for the camp, obliged when Albert asked him to once again protect him from Hanover’s wildlife.

These short breaks in time he steals away, fragments that periodically dot the otherwise mundane and ceaseless stressors of Arthur’s life, have ended up becoming invariably valuable; outings like this, alongside Albert, provide a necessary retreat from the growing terrors that haunt him back at camp.

Arthur gingerly rubs his hands together in front of the fire and he creases his eyebrows, unconsciously shaking his head in discontent as he thinks on the rather dire state of his gang. Half-dead, pushed to the limit, blow after blow dealt to them- it’s a mystery how they keep on surviving. It’s a mystery as to what even motivates them, motivates _him_ , anymore.

One day, Arthur thinks with a sad, pitiful little nod of acknowledgement, there will simply be no where left to hide. Not one last sparse outcrop of land will be spared, nor will there be one more secluded sanctuary to be stumbled upon. Just gunpowder and iron bars; a hangman’s noose waits for him alongside a sheriff’s crooked grin. Arthur knows that day’s coming. And it’s coming sooner than later.

“Arthur,” Albert breathes out, disrupting the deepening frown spreading across Arthur’s face. His voice wraps around his name as he waits patiently for the cowboy to respond to him. Albert is lounging in front of the fire on a quilted shawl he had brought out from his satchel and unfolded onto the dusty ground, one hand behind his head as he faces Arthur.

Startled by the sudden grab for his attention, Arthur’s head snaps up as he offers up a measly grunt of acknowledgment towards Albert.

“Do you enjoy your life out here, roaming the open prairies and vast woodlands? Or are you more akin to my unfavorable disposition towards nature?” Albert laughs with mirth in his tone, no doubt reminiscing on the cliffs he’s fallen off of or of the countless times he almost became a wild beast’s next meal.

Arthur may be listening, but he can’t understand a thing. His mind is clouded, his thoughts thick and hazy with despondency. He takes another second to think, smoke briefly obscuring Albert’s gaze locked on him from across the fire.

“Well, you certainly jus’ said a lot of words there, Mason,” Albert huffs warily, unable to sift through his own head as he’s drowning in the background noise of Pinkertons and Dutch’s failings and unyielding uncertainty. 

“Let me put it this way,” Albert begins, shifting into a more upright position as he continued, “this land, this sky, this life- this is your world,” Albert states, his arms outstretched and poised towards the heavens, fingers curling around the starry night sky.

“It’s your life, and you live it, but I’ve never _seen_ it.”

Arthur falters at Albert’s assertion, licking his lips and blinking in thoughtful consideration of what the photographer just tried to explain to him. He shifts his legs on the cooled ground around the crackling campfire, hands idly rubbing circles around his knee.

“What do ya’ quite mean by that?” he asks slowly, breaking the sleepy lull in their conversation.

“During the whole time that you been assisting me in my endeavors, not once have I asked what you do. Where you go. How you live. It’s as if you’re so eager to get away from it, that each time you find me, the less and less you want to return to your reality.”

Now, Arthur _really_ pauses at that, because the man in front of him has somehow managed to figure out a facet of Arthur that he didn’t even know existed.

His eyebrows furrow, muscles tensing up as his mind tries valiantly to concoct a means to deflect, to hide away the scrap of truth Albert has discovered, to exude a persona that is selfless, simple; certainly not lonely and unsatisfied.

Arthur has no means to escape. What lie shall he come forth with this time, what half-truths and fairy tales should he crumple together in hopes that it will stick?

It’s not worth it.

Arthur glances across the campfire just as his eye catches on Albert’s, him studying the flickering orange haze reflecting off of them. A moment later, and Albert seems as if he’s about to collapse into an apology, begging Arthur not to crush his camera between his fingertips or to use his precious photos as tinder for the fire.

“Oh, I’m sorry if that was too personal, you certainly don’t owe me any exposition or-“ Albert frantically starts with, holding his hands up in front of his chest to smooth out the obvious discomfort bubbling between them.

“You’re right,” Arthur interrupts, voice barely above a whisper, his solemn words hanging heavily in the air, washed out by the smoke and night breeze.

“Pardon?” Albert whispers back, as if they’re school kids swapping bits and pieces of conversation in the back of class.

“I don’t talk about my life to most people, and you haven’t asked,” Arthur sighs, eyes drifting away from Albert and resting on the horizon, “it’s calming sometimes, to get away. To focus on something else than dying, or getting arrested, or bleeding out alone in the canyons.”

Albert sits back quietly and waits for Arthur to go on. Arthur isn’t looking at him, but he feels his eyes, worried, dark, trailing across his face. He isn’t sure if he should continue. He’s never been a genius with words, no matter how well Dutch taught him.

To try and explain away a lifetime of pain and suffering to a man who can’t even fathom rowing a boat is impossible. Albert is right. It’s not his life.

Arthur clenches his teeth, and all at once he feels sorrowful and angry and confused, wondering why Albert of all people had to try and delve into his mind. A part of him, buried deep down underneath the cash and the blood and the booze, feels inconsolably frightened, a wounded animal left to die on a hillside, an abandoned kid at 15 years old with nothing to live for.

Albert thinks he’s just sitting in front of a frayed, yet mythic cowboy, when in reality, he’s sitting in front of a graveyard.

“I live as an outsider,” Arthur says, each syllable heavier and more drawn-out than the last, “there are no luxuries. The shoes that you’re wearing could buy my camp enough medicine to last a month.”

Albert seems taken aback, eyes unblinking and fixed towards Arthur’s face. The photographer watches him over the flickering orange haze of the fire light, and Arthur can tell he’s trying his best to just listen carefully and not interject with half-thoughts and meaningless sympathies.

He sighs, and continues.

“Sometimes I don’t fall into bed until the dawn is coming over the tree line, and when I wake up, my hands are sticky with blood. I couldn’t tell ya whether it came from a lawman, a bandit, or otherwise- after enough time, the, the faces blur together. It’s all the same. Just another nightmare,” he mumbles on, fidgeting uneasily with his overcoat as he makes a point of staring not at Albert, but at the smoldering bits of ember popping and bursting out from the coals.

He doesn’t want to see his face. To know his reaction. It would be the worst pain of all; not a gunshot wound, not a blow to the head, but the pity. The silence. The downturned lips pressed into a somber frown.

There it is again. The silence.

“Prior to meeting you, the only stories of outlaws I were aware of described you people as bloodthirsty hordes, uncaring murderers and backstabbing thieves. Your life, to me, is different, challenging, but I’m relieved to see your humanity. Your sacrifice,” Albert nods to him, leaning forward to draw Arthur’s attention back from the endless, vast grasslands and back towards him.

“My sacrifice? What sacrifice?” Arthur almost spits in disbelief, tone more biting and severe than he intended too. For better or for worse, it doesn’t manage to dissuade Albert.

“In exchange for boundless freedom, you gave up the one thing that connects even people like you and I, and that is safety _._ Comfort _._ Feeling secure and accepted. The price you pay for your freedom is life or death. I could never do it myself.”

Albert stops momentarily, giving Arthur a chance to absorb his words and take them to heart. Arthur scratches at his beard and licks his lips, trying to dissolve the bubbling anxiety trapped within his throat. Albert shifts again, this time sitting upright.

“I don’t condone you, nor claim to want to be you. But I certainly can understand you. Underneath all this remarkable New Yorker ingenuity and class, there’s still a man inside. I am sorry you have to defend yourself with all this bravado and toughness, because I know it hurts you.”

“You don’t know me,” Arthur pushes back, trying to deflect the conversation, to rile up Albert into forgetting he ever asked and leaving it all to wither and die. To be forgotten about again. Arthur isn’t ready to confront it, no, not at all.

“You’re right. When we started to set up camp up here, I realized I barely even knew who you are. I know just a name, nothing more. But I see the pain you hide behind your eyes, the frown lines and the worn, tired expressions you make when you think I’m not looking.”

“Listen Albert, I don’t want to have this conversation. Could ya just, I don’t know, forget about this?” Arthur says, attempting to control the frantic tinge to his voice before it hurts him even further.

Albert studies him again, one last time, and then obliges Arthur, dropping the subject. Arthur lets his head droop forward to mask his grim expression, focusing only on the lazy grey plumes of smoke swirling like paper-thin clouds above the fire. He prays that the orange-red hues of the embers mask the blush of shame that’s creeping up his cheeks.

Albert gets up.

He doesn’t even look at Arthur. It makes him feel like some troublesome little kid, ignored and unwanted by family, friends- the whole world. He ducks into his ramshackle tent and Arthur can hear him rummaging through what few possessions he brought along with him during his expedition, his shadow bent over and leaning side to side.

He’s looking for something, Arthur knows, and a part of him hope it’s some expensive foreign liquor, the kind that knocks you out cold until the sun starts to shine. The kind that doesn’t make you feel anything, good or bad, anymore.

The worn canvas flap of the tent is pushed aside and from it emerges Albert, gaze lingering on something smoothed out in the palm of his hand. He circles around the campfire and brushes off the dirt beside Arthur, then sits down heavily, careful to give Arthur a bit of space between them.

Albert doesn’t say a word. He seems lost in some memory somewhere far, far away, barely acknowledging Arthur gently leaning closer to get a better look at the small piece of paper he’s cradling in his hand. The prairie wind picks up momentarily and rustles Albert’s possession, enabling Arthur to focus on whatever it is that’s so profound to him.

He sees it. It’s a small, tiny little thing, a photograph; hardly bigger than a cigarette card. Something that a businessman would stick into his wallet to keep safe and remind him of those he’s left back home.

It’s well worn, the edges faded and slightly crumpled at the corners, as if Albert had opened and re-folded it thousands of times before displaying it to Arthur. It’s in black and white and clearly shows its age- discoloration and smudges bloom in the background.

Arthur studies it a bit more as orange shadows from the fire illuminate the photo. It’s of two boys, similar in height and stature, both dressed in caps and trousers. Albert silently rubs the pad of his thumb across one of the boy’s faces and sighs, a quiet, morose sound.

“This is my brother,” Albert says weakly as he points at the child on the right, mimicking the slight boyish grin he has in the photo.

Arthur nods without thinking, pondering on their resemblance. They share the same bridged nose, angular head, even the same smiles. Twins?

Albert takes a breath and exhales, his fingers gingerly stretching out the wrinkles the photograph had garnered over the decades. “We grew up together, did everything together. To say he was my best friend would be a disservice as well as an understatement.”

The pain in Albert’s strained voice is palpable. Arthur has never heard the man speak in such a way before, marred by time and trauma. It’s so unknown to him that it frightens him. What happened to these two boys in the photograph that left one gone and the other shaking from the mere mention of the other?

“When we became adults, the two of us fell into our father’s manufacturing business up North. But he never liked it. Never. It wore him down to the point that one day, I woke up to the bed next to me empty and silent,” Albert continues, eyes fixated on the black and white image in front of him.

“He had picked up and moved out West, like you, and found a group he felt like he belonged in. It was so hard for him to adjust, but I thought he was doing fine. Until…,” Albert pauses, taking his eyes off the photograph for the first time to lean back and close his eyes for a moment.

“I got word that they found his body, strung up and left to rot in the woods. He was robbed of everything except the clothes on his back and this photograph in his pocket,” Albert’s lips were trembling now, fingers shakily holding onto what little remained of his brother.

Arthur whistled out low, ducking his head down in respect for Albert’s story and for his brother. He let the silence between them sit still as he quietly fished through the pockets of his overcoat for a cigarette to offer to the solemn man beside him.

The tips of his fingers clung onto the cigarette pack as Arthur wordlessly pulled one out, holding it in front of Albert. He accepted it and tucked it between his thumb and forefinger, waiting for Arthur to bring up his lighter and flick it to life.

Arthur held the small flame in his hands and brought it up to the cigarette, lighting it on one end and watching as Albert immediately breathed in, his eyes remaining firmly shut, as if he couldn’t bare to look at the photograph for a second longer than necessary.

“What was his name?” Arthur whispers, the neglected fire-pit dimming slightly against the deep blue of the night sky.

“Matthew. His name was Matthew,” Albert whispers back, taking another hit from his cigarette as his eyebrows furrow and deepen in sorrow.

Arthur looks out onto the serene prairie beneath them, gazing on the rolling tumbleweeds and herds of wild horses clinging together to rest. He realizes that the photographer next to him isn’t different from him at all, not in the slightest. They’re both running from something bigger than themselves, trying to put miles of land and sea between them and their pasts.

“He never hurt anybody. He just wanted freedom, to live as himself. Sometimes, Arthur, I think about the man he would’ve become if he was still with us. I think he would’ve been just like you,” Albert goes on, fireflies floating lazily in the berry bushes and grasses surrounding them.

“To be honest, the thought brings more solace to me than anything else imaginable,” Albert sighs, carefully folding each corner of the photo in on itself as he tucked it back into his jacket, smoothing out his now-empty hands on his thighs.

Arthur can’t help but reach out a hand, placing it lightly on Albert’s shoulder, offering the smallest bit of reassurance and strength. He understands now, why Albert is kind and amicable around him when others have been rough and distant towards him for decades. Albert understands.

His words mean far more to Arthur than he’ll ever know.

Albert leans into the touch, turning his head to the side to look up at Arthur for the first time since coming out of their tent. Albert looks at him with a familiarity that makes Arthur’s heart hurt, as if he’s lost in a time where his world wasn’t shattered and empty.

“I am sorry, Albert. For you and for Matthew,” Arthur says in a low tone of voice, steady and sincere. It’s as dark as ash around them, and only getting darker, but Arthur swears he can see a tear bead at the corner of Albert’s eyes.

“No, I am sorry for you, Arthur. Truly.”

Albert shifts and lets his head lean on Arthur’s shoulder, supporting his weight. This time, they both close their eyes, hearing only the faintest call of cicadas in the distance and the rolling warmth of the fire slowly spreading across their skin.


End file.
